spurring transition to ipv6 -- make it faster

Tue Oct 14 22:33:15 UTC 2008

On 15/10/2008, at 8:56 AM, Niall Donegan wrote:
> Scott Doty wrote:
>> After all, if most p2p traffic is v4, prioritizing ipv6 (as a general
>> concept) should improve the user experience.
>
> How long do you think it will take for the P2P software authors to
> transition over to IPv6? I'll bet that P2P users will be a lot more
> likely to use IPv6 over Aunt May checking her email once a day.

Sorry, it happened already.

Presentation I gave at APNIC26 on the subject:
http://www.apnic.net/meetings/26/program/ipv6/ward-ipv6-stats.pdf

A Teredo/6to4 relay in Finland operated by CSC/FUNET:
http://www.braintrust.co.nz/temp/csc-funet-teredo-6to4.png

Note the massive increase of traffic. It ramps up the *day* uTorrent  
1.8 came out.

I have long said:
1) IPv4 will continue to exist for web/email/etc. servers.
2) When ISPs run out of IPv4 space and start NATing their customers,  
IPv6 will become the new way to do applications that require end-to- 
end. This is *why* Teredo exists - so Microsoft applications that  
require end-to-end can get it, without having to implement a NAT  
traversal stack in each and every app. Teredo is now available on most  
OSes.
3) (2) is clearly happening already, with bit torrent applications.  
It's an easy way to do NAT traversal for free.
4) When IPv6 is widely enough supported, then maybe someone will run a  
web/email/etc. server on IPv6 only.

There is a lot of work to attempt to keep IPv4 end-to-end alive when  
SP-NAT happens. Personally, I think attempting to prolong IPv4 end-to- 
end is a waste of time when IPv6 does it already, and all these  
proposals require applications to be updated to support dynamic ports  
and things. If you're updating the application, just make it support  
IPv6. For most applications this is trivial.

--
Nathan Ward